Our world is increasingly digital turning everything we know into something that can start with an ‘e’ – e-Science, e-Research, e-Edition -, which means, for the academy, a trend to open resources, articles and data. The number of objects in digital format allows us to experiment new ways to analyse information, peer review, share its content, analyse its impact and visualize how the objects, subjects, institutions and authors are connected.

Since the first journal experiments in the 1990s, we are witnessing a move to the digital, which has been fuelled by Open Access to scientific literature and the availability of open source software (e.g. OJS). Scholarly communication uses, as main channels, journals and monographs that are the archives of science. Scientific journals opened up the door, consolidating themselves as irreversible digital paradigms in the academic arena, and the scientific monographs, including the commercial ones, are also present in this world. International reports and studies confirm this trend in digital publishing: e-books production and demand growth ratio have increased a 20% approximately in the last years.

E-edition is very common nowadays for Scholarly Communication with e-books and e-journals (Open Access or subscription based) being the most frequent delivery format for the end user. The user, the main stakeholder in this process, is a critical element in what concerns every product introduction. The penetration of digital tools in everyday life explains what is perceived as a growing receptivity rate regarding the recent editorial media and products.

The growing availability of a huge number of digital resources opens up new education models, where the openness is the key. E-edition has been consolidated as the most frequent option o educational proposals because they turn access easier, and increase mobility and online reading, a phenomenon that is being enhanced by the availability of digital editions or e-editions through digital libraries and Open Access journals and repositories.

In this universe of opportunities, we face new challenges: the preservation of this information for the future and the understanding of user behaviour are just two of them.

Topics

The topics proposed on this track intend to gather research that addresses the creation and consumption of digital information, particularly scientific information. From different perspectives, this works can help to draw the current and the future digital landscape. The topics suggested, but not limited to this track, are:

  • Citation Metrics
  • Digital Curation
  • Digital Humanities
  • E-edition in Academic context
  • E-reading systems: devices and applications for researching and learning
  • E-science
  • Information Metrics and User Studies
  • Main educational models with digital contents: Open Access systems and proprietary solutions
  • Social Networks Analysis
  • Tools and experiences sharing research

Paper language

English

Track Scientific Committee

José Antonio Cordón (Universidad de Salamanca, Spain) – Chair
Raquel Gómez Díaz (Universidad de Salamanca, Spain) Co–Chair
Maria Manuel Borges (Faculdade de Letras – Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal) – Co-chair
Araceli García Rodríguez (Universidad de Salamanca, Spain) – Co-chair
Carlos A. Lopes (ISPA, Lisboa, Portugal)